Overview

This volume documents the Nixon administration’s primarily multilateral arms
control policy between 1969 and 1972. It does not cover the high profile Strategic
Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) with the Soviet Union, culminating in the signing of
the SALT agreements in May 1972. These negotiations are covered in Foreign
Relations, 1969–1976, Vol. XXXII, SALT I, 1969–1972. While the Nixon
administration’s arms control policies have become synonymous with SALT, the SALT
negotiations were actually just one of a panoply of historic arms control and
disarmament initiatives that the Nixon administration pursued between 1969 and 1972.
This volume focuses on the administration’s multilateral arms control policies, most
notably its review of biological and chemical warfare policies, ratification of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, negotiation of the Seabed Arms Control Treaty,
approach to nuclear testing and test-ban proposals, and ratification of the Geneva
Protocol. Most of these negotiations were played out in international arenas such as
the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Committee (ENDC) and its successor, the Conference
of the Committee on Disarmament (CCD), the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), and the United Nations, but the documents here show they were fundamentally
U.S.-Soviet dialogues, part of the cold war superpower struggle that underlay much
of United States diplomacy at the time.